Lowball Rules

In lowball the object is to win the pot by holding the lowest five-card hand at showdown, or by making a bet that no other player calls.

Most poker games can be played for low, but the name lowball most often refers to low Five Card Draw. The stud game played for low is usually called Razz, and there is also Five Card Stud Lowball.

The game is played with a standard 52-card deck, with one joker added in some forms (see 2.4).

The name Lowball is occasionally used for Jacks Back, a jacks-or-better draw game that is played for low when no one can open.

Two unpaired hands are compared by their highest card first; the lower card wins. If the highest cards are equal, the next highest are compared, and so on. A hand is named by its highest card, so 8-6-4-3-2 is an eight-low.

Where a hand contains pairs, one pair beats two pairs, two pairs beat three of a kind, and so on, following the high ranking in reverse. Where straights and flushes count, they are ranked in their normal high-poker places, so they are bad hands for low.

Suits have no rank. Hands with the same ranks tie and split the pot.

The joker. Ace-to-five lowball is often played with a joker, which acts as a bug: it counts as the lowest rank missing from the holder's hand. Deuce-to-seven is normally played without a joker.

See hand rankings for the full orders.

Lowball may be played with antes, but formal games more often use blinds. The blind structure varies between forms and venues and shall be announced before play; see the page for each form.

Blinds count as bets, and a player who posted a big blind may raise when the action returns to them even if everyone else has only called.

Each player is dealt five cards face down, one at a time, starting with the player to the dealer's left. A betting round follows.

In each draw, the remaining players in turn, starting from the dealer's left, may discard any number of cards and receive the same number of replacements, or stand pat.

Each draw is followed by a betting round. After the last betting round, if two or more players remain, there is a showdown and the lowest hand wins.

In games with several draws the deck may run out. The discards are then shuffled and cut to form a new deck for the players still waiting to draw.

If all but one player folds at any point, the remaining player wins the pot without showing their cards.

Kansas City Lowball is also called Deuce-to-Seven Single Draw, or Billy Baxter Lowball after a player who won the world championship in the game several times.

California Lowball is sometimes played with the betting sevens rule, which penalises a player who checks a seven-low or better after the draw. See Ace-to-Five Lowball.

Some split-pot triple draw games used in mixed games pair a low hand with another ranking, for example Archie (high and ace-to-five low). See also Badugi and mixed games.